Mike Huckabee is challenging the results of the Washington state Republican caucuses, his campaign announced Sunday, after accusing the state party chairman of calling the election for John McCain before all the votes were counted. The campaign will be pursuing a full investigation, including sending in lawyers to join those already on the scene in the state, officials told FOX News.
Washington State Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser announced late Saturday that McCain had won the 2008 Republican caucuses in the state with 87.2 percent of precincts reporting. McCain had 25.5 percent over Huckabee’s 23.7 percent in that race.
Esser issued a statement congratulating McCain on a “hard-fought win,” and Huckabee on a “strong second-place finish.”
Ed Rollins, Huckabee campaign chairman, directly challenged Esser’s move, saying the count was incomplete because the other 12.8 percent of precincts could tip the scales since McCain was beating Huckabee by only a couple hundred votes.
“The chairman showed very bad judgment in stopping the voting last night when announcing John McCain had won, when there was less than a 200-vote margin between the two candidates,” Rollins told FOX News in an exclusive interview. “You never announce a vote, in my 40 years of politics, I have never know anybody to announce a vote count before the vote is counted.”
Rollins was quick to say that the campaign was not accusing the McCain camp of anything untoward, and the issue lies solely with Esser’s call. He added that campaign attorneys have attempted to contact Esser’s lawyers but had not yet received a return phone call.The final results came during the night after the race had been declared too close to call and Washington GOP election officials decided to call it a night. Esser said a final tally would not come until Monday.
Speaking in a television interview earlier in the day, the former Arkansas governor indicated that he wasn’t ready to give up on the Washington state results but did not discuss specifics.
“We’re looking at some legal issues. We’re not ready to concede that one,” Huckabee said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Washington state Republicans send 40 delegates to the national convention, this year being held in Minneapolis-St. Paul from Sept. 1-4. Like Louisiana, about half of the delegates are chosen by presidential primary, which will be held in Washington on Feb. 19. The remainder come from the caucus and convention process.
Despite the outcome in Washington, Huckabee had a good showing on Saturday, winning the Kansas Republican caucuses by a landslide and edging out McCain in the Louisiana GOP presidential primary.
Huckabee said even he was surprised by the results in Kansas, where he won all of the state’s 36 delegates to the convention, and Louisiana, where no delegates were awarded because no candidate reached the 50 percent threshold.
He added that he feels strongly about his ability to pull out a win in Virginia and Maryland on Tuesday — during the Potomac Primaries, along with Washington, D.C. — after taking Louisiana and Kansas.
“I think we’ll get a nice little bump out of what happened in Kansas,” Huckabee told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“If you look at where our votes are coming from, it’s clearly from the conservatives. I think that makes sense. I am the most conservative candidate left standing,” he later said.
But Huckabee trails McCain badly in the delegate count, 719 to 234 before the Washington results are included. The eventual nominee needs to secure 1,191 delegates, and only about 1,000 are still in play. He also has only about 27 percent of the vote in recent Virginia polling compared to 55 percent for McCain.
Karl Rove, former senior adviser to President Bush, said while McCain hasn’t won over conservatives yet, in the 2000 GOP primary race, Bush didn’t get more than two-thirds to three-quarters of the vote until a month after McCain, his principal opponent, stepped out of the race.
“It is impossible for Governor Huckabee to win the nomination,” said Rove, a FOX News contributor. “He would have to win 83 percent of the delegates in the contest after Super Tuesday,” which Rove said can’t be done after a loss in Washington and a beauty contest in Louisiana.
“I am not certain I’d take a lot of solace from yesterday. As we get into these big states with big primaries, I think we’ll see a consolidation around McCain,” Rove said.
But unlike Mitt Romney, who dropped out of the GOP race on Thursday, Huckabee said he is not ready to hand over the nomination to McCain. He also said he isn’t moved by Rove’s prognostications.
“Karl Rove has also maxed out personal contributions to John McCain so I’m not saying he doesn’t know what he’s talking about politically, but he’s not infallible either. And the point is, Karl is a supporter of John McCain,” Huckabee said while campaigning at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., which was founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell.
“The Democrats haven’t settled their nominee either, so for us to suddenly act like we have to all step aside and have a coronation instead of an election, that’s the antithesis of everything Republicans are supposed to believe,” Huckabee told NBC. “We believe competition breeds excellence and the lack of it breeds mediocrity.”
A look at exit polling from Louisiana shows that McCain remains very unpopular among Republicans who consider themselves very conservative. Speaking to “FOX News Sunday,” President Bush said McCain may have to work harder.
“He is a conservative. Look, he is very strong on national defense. He is tough fiscally. He believes the tax cuts ought to be permanent. He is pro-life. His principles are sound and solid as far as I’m concerned,” Bush said.
Huckabee said he, his campaign team and supporters are fired up by the record hits and contributions on his Web site, and he is going to continue to demonstrate differences between him and his opponent, particularly on issues like tax cuts and immigration.
Huckabee acknowledged that he will vote for for the Republican nominee no matter who it is, rejected the notion that he’s on any short list to be McCain’s running mate and refused to give it consideration at this point.
“I’m not going to be asked. I think it’s pretty evident that there would be a whole lot of people on the list long, long before me, and one of them would say ‘yes,”‘ Huckabee said.
FOX News’ Serafin Gomez contributed to this report